At height of popularity, creator pulls Flappy Bird from App Stores

Despite $50,000 in daily revenue, developer said he “cannot take” the attention.

Thus far, we have yet to write anything about the mobile gaming phenomenon that is Flappy Bird. That’s mostly because we haven't had much to say about it: as a game, the tap-to-fly-between-the-pipes gameplay is almost insultingly simple and uninteresting. The only curious things about the free-to-download game, really, were its sudden and meteoric rise to the top of the Android and iOS app charts in the last few weeks and what that popularity says about our collective taste in games. Ian Bogost covered this ground so well over at The Atlantic, though, that anything else on the subject would just be a waste of time and energy.

But Flappy Bird became a little more interesting this afternoon when the game was pulled down from the iOS and Android App Stores, apparently at the request of Vietnamese creator Dong Nguyen. The millions who have downloaded the game so far will still be able to play it, of course, but anyone who missed out on the phenomenon during the week or two of its unexpected success (or the few months previous, when it languished on app stores largely unloved) is out of luck.

What Nguyen “cannot take” isn’t the reported $50,000 in daily revenueFlappy Bird was bringing in, but rather the attention the game’s success has brought. “I can call Flappy Bird is [sic] a success of mine. But it also ruins my simple life. So now I hate it,” Nguyen tweeted yesterday. “Yes, the #1 makes a lot of visibility, more profits and also getting more haters :-(“ he tweeted earlier in the week.

Many of those haters have attacked Nguyen for making so much money from a game they see as simplistic and unoriginal. The game’s general design has heavy similarities to a number of largely unknown casual games from the past, though it’s important to note that it’s not identical to any of these likely inspirations. Kotaku was among many to note how the game’s art is extremely similar to Nintendo’s Mario games, though the art assets don’t seem to be ripped directly from any copyrighted works. Nguyen has denied any suggestion that there were any legal issues behind the game’s removal.

Others have suggested that the sudden success of Flappy Bird and other games by Nguyen was driven by fake reviews and bot-powered downloads, rather than any organic viral spread. And of course, being a prominent person on the Internet, Nguyen also attracted his fair share of death threats and other undue abuse from trolls both before and after the removal was announced.

Despite all this, Nguyen has kept up a busy conversation on his Twitter account with fans and haters alike, but says he has been “overloaded” with requests for formal interviews from the press, most of which he has turned down. “I am sorry press people. You are not my players!” he tweeted in explanation. Thus, Nguyen's tweets are the best window we have into his thoughts amid his game's meteoric and unexpected success. Those tweets show him expressing concern that people are “overusing” the game, suggesting that he is being “misjudged,” and explaining a lack of game updates by saying cryptically “a lot of things [are] happen[ing] to me right now.”

It all suggests a man who's ready to take a step back from a limelight he never sought or had any reason to expect. Still, in his last tweet as of this writing, Nguyen vowed that he will “still make games.”

While Flappy Bird may be gone, an army of overt clones has already developed to take its place, latching on to the original’s unlikely success like so many bottom-feeding leeches. The excellent I Want a Clone tumblr has been tracking some ofthe moreegregiousexamples of developers offering to buy and/or sell direct copies of the game to make a quick buck. Going by Nguyen’s example, those cloners may want to be careful what they wish for…

[Update (Feb. 10): Speaking of clones, since this story was first published, a game called Fly Birdie - Flappy Bird Flyer has skyrocketed to No. 2 on the worldwide iTunes free app charts. Another clone named Flappy Bee is currently ranked fifth on that chart.]

I'm the sole developer (in a 2-man team) of a barely successful Mac/PC game in a very small niche. It makes about $1k/month. Several times a month, I want to make it free so that I can tone down what users expect from me. If it wasn't a 2-man team, it would've happened before we even hit $500 in revenue. Whenever there's a bad review, it hurts. Whenever a user can't get it to work (whether due to their unfamiliarity with the equipment required or my mistakes), I feel it personally. If a multiplayer server goes down, even just for 15-30 minutes, it'll ruin my day. Next fall (the interest in the game is very seasonal), it'll likely be even more popular.

I can't imagine handling that at flappy-bird scale. He probably has hundreds or thousands of people telling him his game sucks and he sucks (most likely due to their own crappy phones or bad playing skills) every day.

To the guy saying: "well you shouldn't put it out there if you can't take it": Do you want the only people to develop software to be robots? How about this: don't be an asshole. The guy wrote some software that happened to be successful. He's still a human being. If it was at <500 installs, you'd probably treat him nicely (as people did when my game was small). Why should that change if it is at 10,000,000 installs?

tl,dr: The sheer number of user requests and (sometimes undeserved) bad reviews when developing software as a 1-man team makes me fully understand why a guy would pack up after banking 6 or more figures.

I've been an Ars reader for a decade but never felt compelled to comment until this story.

In the last two years I went from nothing to being a multi-millionaire because an app I created. Most of you have no idea the amount of bullshit successful app developers have to endure. My family and I get death threats on a weekly basis, and not from angry basement-dweller 16-year-old types. There are legitimate organized criminals and total psychopaths who hunt successful app developers because they're easy targets.

I've had people track down friends and family members on Facebook, then send me their private photos with threats of rape and murder.

Anyone calling this developer "weak" because he couldn't cope with that is a shitbag, and absolutely part of the problem with humanity. If you feel anything other than sympathy for this guy, go fuck yourself until dead.

Money isn't everything. In fact, it's nothing when your family is terrified and you can't leave the house because you're worried you'll be kidnapped for ransom or killed by a psycho.

177 Reader Comments

I'm the sole developer (in a 2-man team) of a barely successful Mac/PC game in a very small niche. It makes about $1k/month. Several times a month, I want to make it free so that I can tone down what users expect from me. If it wasn't a 2-man team, it would've happened before we even hit $500 in revenue. Whenever there's a bad review, it hurts. Whenever a user can't get it to work (whether due to their unfamiliarity with the equipment required or my mistakes), I feel it personally. If a multiplayer server goes down, even just for 15-30 minutes, it'll ruin my day. Next fall (the interest in the game is very seasonal), it'll likely be even more popular, and I dread it.

I can't imagine handling that at flappy-bird scale. He probably has hundreds or thousands of people telling him his game sucks and he sucks (most likely due to their own crappy phones or bad playing skills) every day.

To the guy saying: "well you shouldn't put it out there if you can't take it": Do you want the only people to develop software to be robots? How about this: don't be an asshole. The guy wrote some software that happened to be successful. He's still a human being. If it was at <500 installs, you'd probably treat him nicely (as people did when my game was small). Why should that change if it is at 10,000,000 installs?

tl,dr: The sheer number of user requests and (sometimes undeserved) bad reviews when developing software as a 1-man team makes me fully understand why a guy would pack up after banking 6 or more figures.

No what I'd do if I won the lottery? Buy a decent house and put the rest into savings accounts/CD's etc. Probably talk with my bank about the best way to invest it. Certainly not tell tons of people.

You have too much trust in banks... I wouldn't trust them a large sum of money. I'd invest it myself, either buying shares in companies I trust or building a small business of my own.

That's certainly a valid thing to do with your winnings.

But banks, at least where I'm from, have a reputation for being dependable and fiercely protecting their customer's money.

Sure, they protect their customer's money on average, but they're also prepared to take cut-throat risks on an individual basis and you're more likely to fall to that if you are an outlier... and anyone who wins a lottery is certainly an outlier.

Well, it depends on how much money you're talking about.

If you win a million dollars, it's not a problem since FDIC insures up to $250,000. If you win something like $350,000,000 then a bank is just a dumb move.

I'd just hire some big firm, say, "here," and forget about it.

And I'd move to Florence, Italy. But that's a different part of the discussion.

No what I'd do if I won the lottery? Buy a decent house and put the rest into savings accounts/CD's etc. Probably talk with my bank about the best way to invest it. Certainly not tell tons of people.

You have too much trust in banks... I wouldn't trust them a large sum of money. I'd invest it myself, either buying shares in companies I trust or building a small business of my own.

That's certainly a valid thing to do with your winnings.

But banks, at least where I'm from, have a reputation for being dependable and fiercely protecting their customer's money.

Sure, they protect their customer's money on average, but they're also prepared to take cut-throat risks on an individual basis and you're more likely to fall to that if you are an outlier... and anyone who wins a lottery is certainly an outlier.

I haven't won the lottery and then visited the bank so it's tough to say for sure how they'd react. But in general I'm smart enough to know that I should put enough into low yield/low risk savings to live a comfortable and modest life, and then to take the rest and go high risk/high yield.

Call me a terrible cynic, but I can't help wondering a tiny, tiny bit whether this is a play for further publicity. It gets his name out there and his product out there even further; as mentioned in the article if it weren't for him taking it down we wouldn't be talking about it here on Ars. Take it down for a few days, get a lot more hype, and then put it back up and watch the cash roll in.

He probably is totally sincere and so I feel bad for having that thought, but as I said I'm a cynic by nature and my mind can't help but think in that direction.

If he is indeed being honest and it's no publicity play, I wish him the best and hope things calm down enough that he feels better.

He's making $50k a day and he takes it down! Why not just leave the game up and bear with the spotlight?

Not everyone is it in for the money.

If he was making 50k per day when he took it down, he has probably raked in an absolutely life-changing amount of money anyway. Especially for a Vietnamese person (Vietname GDP per capita 1,595 USD in 2012).

I just don't get this. Why not just remove himself from the internet for a while while continuing to rake in 50 grand a day?

Serious question: Would you give up the Internet completely for $50K/day? I probably would, but it wouldn't be automatic...

-KO

I would give it up for a while for certain. In fact I DEFINITELY would and I'd employ somebody to curate for me my own personal internet. I could afford to pay a couple of full-timers $50k per year to do this and still be absurdly wealthy.

That said, he doesn't have to give up the internet, just his twitter account and email address (which he wouldn't have to give up). Bang, he's invisible again on the internet.

I feel for the guy (the internet hate machine is very powerful), but he is almost certainly going to regret this descision in the future.

Money isn't the be-all and end-all for everyone.

And besides, as someone pointed out earlier... GDP per capita in Vietnam is under $1600. That means he was pulling in more than 30 TIMES the average annual income per DAY. Translate that into US $$ and you'll see that he probably made more than he knows how to spend, is set for life, and probably just REALLY wants to escape the media storm he's trapped in.

It is interesting how many people who win big on the lottery later say their lives are worse.

[edit. Did a little research, and a little rough math:

I just looked up the income figures, and average monthly income in Vietnam is $185... so about $2200 per year. Do the math, and that breaks down to less than $10 per day on average... and he's pulling in over $50,000 per day.

Median annual income in the US is about $51,000... works out to roughly $140/day. To get a sense of the comparison, it would be like a developer in the US suddenly pulling in $700,000 per day. $21,000,000 per year.

Awfully easy to understand how overwhelmed the guy must be when you adjust the numbers.

I don't understand it, he made a popular if extremely derivative and exploitative game, so how could he not be in it for the money? Any other of these derivative titles could have been artificially inflated by buzzfud and their creators would have gladly accepted the extreme wealth that resulted. If he was in it to make an enjoyable game or something unique, noteworthy, worth playing... the resultant product certainly doesn't show it.

It looked and feels like something I would try for my first time with making a mobile game. The gameplay is nothing new and it used very mario like art assets. I would publish it just for fun.

He obviously couldn't deal with the spotlight...but why the hell wouldn't you just abandon your twitter account instead of abandoning $50k per day?

He's giving up some amount of revenue but it's not like all those millions of installs stopped working when he yanked the app. Those installs are still bringing in revenue.

I'm not 100% sure, but if you remove your app from the app store doesn't any future revenue go to Apple?

If not, then this is (IMO) a much more reasonable descision - in fact it might even boost his income and prolong the life of what is a rather ordinary (not bad, but not particularly good either) game.

What? Of course not. He has an ad in the app, there is no revenue ever going to Apple.

100% of revenue goes to Apple, who then pay app developers 70% of that (so Apple collects 30%). If the app is not on the app store anymore, I thought Apple no longer had to pay you any of the money they receive for your app. I couldn't find any more information about this with a quick Google, so I'm not sure why I think that though.

I'm pretty sure most of the assholes shooting threats at the poor guy think that, by removing the game from the app stores, they're gonna lose their stupid game. Sometimes I wish the internet wasn't such a huge megaphone for dumb people.

I never played Flappy Bird, but I've seen a ton of screenshots. All I see is a game with a bunch of assets pulled from various Mario games in what I assume is some variation on the endless runner genre, which I don't particularly enjoy. And I have to wonder when Nintendo is going to ask for their cut.

For the commenter who asked if people would give up their Internet for $50,000 a day, who wouldn't? That's $1.5 million a month. You wouldn't have to work ever again and neither would those you love. Hell, I'd give up the Internet for $50,000 a year. I guess some people who are well off wouldn't, but in this economy... that just seems like a smart move. Add to that figure the amount I save by not having a smartphone and a data plan and it goes up even more.

And with regard to his ad revenue post-pulldown, I don't know how Apple works, but on the Android side, if his ad is through Google AdSense, he would still get that revenue regardless of the standing of his Play Store account. If his ad is independent of Google (and Apple), the revenue would come in regardless of the app's listing in any market. As long as people are playing it, he makes money. The comment about Apple taking all revenue and giving the developer 70% doesn't work, because this is a free game, not a paid one. That statement applies to paid apps. Google does the same thing (and probably takes roughly the same cut).

Lastly, if the money really is a burden for this guy, I hope he finds some charitable outlet. I don't know much about what Vietnam looks like, but I know a lot of East Asia is poor, so I imagine there are a lot of scams. But if he can find an organization that is really trying to help people and throw money at them, then this story would have a much happier ending.

In understand what he is going through, having read a lot of articles on lottery winner. Cases of being poisoned by spouse via arsenic and murdered by own brother via hitman is part of the outsome. Among others.

And of course, if you dreaded going to family gathering just because of they will ask you 'when are you going to get married', now multiple that dread by 100X when they are asking you for your money - just because.

I think deep down only he knows why he did what he did. I think Bill Gates said it best, the first million is great, the next one not so much. Science test this too and it was correct: after certain amount, more is not that much difference unless you are truly greedy.

So if he is getting death threat in real world, pulling the plug maybe the last option he have.

Hmm... I have to agree that I find it strange that he would take the game down so suddenly but maybe he figured he made more money than he deserved and continuing to accept more when he didn't intend to continue working on the game would be immoral.

I played it for about 5 minutes just because I read the headline that it was going to be taken down. Meh, tap tap tap, bird hit something. I can see how someone might get sucked in to that but it's not for me. If a game doesn't have an enjoyable story, I just can't get into it these days. I guess that is why mobile gaming is mostly wasted on me.

If it were me, I would have just disappeared from my Twitter account for a few days, relaxed and then come back to reconsider after a break. If I still felt overwhelmed, I would take my million dollars and walk.

I'm the sole developer (in a 2-man team) of a barely successful Mac/PC game in a very small niche. It makes about $1k/month. Several times a month, I want to make it free so that I can tone down what users expect from me. If it wasn't a 2-man team, it would've happened before we even hit $500 in revenue. Whenever there's a bad review, it hurts. Whenever a user can't get it to work (whether due to their unfamiliarity with the equipment required or my mistakes), I feel it personally. If a multiplayer server goes down, even just for 15-30 minutes, it'll ruin my day. Next fall (the interest in the game is very seasonal), it'll likely be even more popular, and I dread it.

I can't imagine handling that at flappy-bird scale. He probably has hundreds or thousands of people telling him his game sucks and he sucks (most likely due to their own crappy phones or bad playing skills) every day.

To the guy saying: "well you shouldn't put it out there if you can't take it": Do you want the only people to develop software to be robots? How about this: don't be an asshole. The guy wrote some software that happened to be successful. He's still a human being. If it was at <500 installs, you'd probably treat him nicely (as people did when my game was small). Why should that change if it is at 10,000,000 installs?

tl,dr: The sheer number of user requests and (sometimes undeserved) bad reviews when developing software as a 1-man team makes me fully understand why a guy would pack up after banking 6 or more figures.

This is in no way meant as criticism, BUT: I believe you forgot to ask for a pony! ("Everyone has a big butt!" - Pee Wee Herman)

There is an unfortunate tendency common to (what I hope is) a minority to embrace a philosophy encapsulated by the phrase; "I have always believed in building myself up by tearing others down!" And sad, in addition to unfortunate, as a kind or encouraging word takes the same effort as disparaging ones, & negativity exacts a psychic toll.

No what I'd do if I won the lottery? Buy a decent house and put the rest into savings accounts/CD's etc. Probably talk with my bank about the best way to invest it. Certainly not tell tons of people.

You have too much trust in banks... I wouldn't trust them a large sum of money. I'd invest it myself, either buying shares in companies I trust or building a small business of my own.

That's certainly a valid thing to do with your winnings.

But banks, at least where I'm from, have a reputation for being dependable and fiercely protecting their customer's money.

Sure, they protect their customer's money on average, but they're also prepared to take cut-throat risks on an individual basis and you're more likely to fall to that if you are an outlier... and anyone who wins a lottery is certainly an outlier.

What does this even mean? Do you know how U.S. banks work? Because they don't say "Oh, sorry, you came into your money all at once, so we kept your assets segregated and can't fill your withdrawal using cash from the reserves we're mandated to keep. Also, FDIC requirements don't apply to you,"

Seriously, please let me know how a retail bank would operate in the way you're implying.

I've been an Ars reader for a decade but never felt compelled to comment until this story.

In the last two years I went from nothing to being a multi-millionaire because an app I created. Most of you have no idea the amount of bullshit successful app developers have to endure. My family and I get death threats on a weekly basis, and not from angry basement-dweller 16-year-old types. There are legitimate organized criminals and total psychopaths who hunt successful app developers because they're easy targets.

I've had people track down friends and family members on Facebook, then send me their private photos with threats of rape and murder.

Anyone calling this developer "weak" because he couldn't cope with that is a shitbag, and absolutely part of the problem with humanity. If you feel anything other than sympathy for this guy, go fuck yourself until dead.

Money isn't everything. In fact, it's nothing when your family is terrified and you can't leave the house because you're worried you'll be kidnapped for ransom or killed by a psycho.

Abusive gamers is nothing new in the game industry. Professional game developers (read: non-indie[1]) have been experiencing this sort of abuse for years. It's often the reason why game developers themselves don't talk directly to their fans. I know 2K Games have an employee to talk to Civilization fans. Which could quite possibly be the worst job in the world.

I have seen fans of Europa Universalis talking shit they don't know and calling the developers stupid right to their face on the Paradox forums. Paradox Development Studio is one of the few studios where developers interact directly with the fans.

Fortunately, they have grown more immune to this sort of abuse, particularly when the comments tend to include 'facts' that simply are not true.

It's a sad, sad state of affairs. I am not condoning in any way the way things are. But once you progress out into game development, you should be aware there be assholes out there (dragons I can deal with).

Kyle Orland / Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in Pittsburgh, PA.